Modern society has come to depend heavily on computers and computer technology. It is especially prevalent in the business arena where companies compete fiercely for customers and product sales. A company with just-in-time inventory and well focused advertising strategies generally produces a product cheaper and delivers it faster to a customer than a competitor. Computer technology makes this type of business edge possible by networking businesses, information, and customers together. Although originally computers communicated to other computers via networks that only consisted of local area networks (LANs), the advent of the Internet has allowed virtually everyone with a computer to participate in a global network. This allows small businesses to be competitive with larger businesses without having to finance and build a network structure.
As computing and networking technologies become more robust, secure and reliable, more consumers, wholesalers, retailers, entrepreneurs, educational institutions and the like are shifting paradigms and employing the Internet to perform business instead of using traditional brick and mortar stores. Many businesses are now providing web sites and on-line services. For example, today a consumer can access their bank accounts via the Internet and perform a growing number of available transactions such as balance inquiries, funds transfers, and bill payment.
Moreover, electronic commerce has pervaded almost every conceivable type of business. People have come to expect that their favorite stores not only have brick and mortar business locations, but that they can also be accessed “online,” typically via the Internet's World Wide Web (WWW). The Web allows customers to view graphical representations of a business' store and products. Ease of use from the home and convenient purchasing methods, typically lead to increased sales. Buyers enjoy the freedom of being able to comparison shop without spending time and money to drive from store to store.
This leads to a fierce competition between online businesses and makes online advertising paramount. Advertising, in general, is a key revenue source in just about any commercial market or setting. To reach as many consumers as possible, advertisements are traditionally presented via billboards, television, radio, and print media such as newspapers and magazines. However, with the Internet, advertisers have found a new and perhaps less expensive medium for reaching vast numbers of potential customers across a large and diverse geographic span. Advertisements on the Internet may be seen through any content rendered by a browser and/or other client device capable of rendering Internet content. This can include email, game consoles, video-on-demand via TV, web pages, and/or web sites as well as pop-up windows when a particular site is visited and the like.
Thus, global communication networks, such as the Internet, have presented commercial opportunities for reaching vast numbers of potential customers. In the past several years, large amounts of users have turned to the Internet as a reliable source of news, research resources, and various other types of information. In addition, online shopping, making dinner reservations, and buying concert and/or movie tickets are just a few of the common activities currently conducted while sitting in front of a computer by way of the Internet. The proliferation of easy access to the Internet has also facilitated to exponentially grow the traffic to web sites.
Typically, businesses like to be assured that the cost of advertising is justified by some type of guarantee as to the type of traffic that will be exposed to their advertisements. If advertisers believe that they are reaching users who are ready to purchase (i.e., users in a commercial “transactional stage”) but, in reality, the majority of the users are only researching a particular type of product (i.e., users in a commercial “informational stage”) or, even worse, they are simply browsing the Web for pleasure (i.e., users in a non-commercial stage), the business will be extremely unsatisfied to have paid top dollar for an advertisement that was supposedly directed at actual potential purchasers of their product type. Users who receive undesired advertisements may also form a negative image of a business that constantly bombards them with advertisements when they are not looking to purchase anything. This is important to note because matching products with buyers is generally how a business stays in business. When substantial mismatching occurs, advertisers move along and take their dollars with them, causing lost advertising revenue.